EXTREMIST LEAFLET FOUND AT BLAST SITE

An explosion at a lavish underground shopping mall opposite the Kremlin may be the work of a previously unknown group that opposes materialism and warns that it is dangerous to consumers, Russian investigators said on Wednesday.

As police stepped up security at the three-level mall where the bomb exploded on Tuesday, the Federal Security Service said a leaflet that attacked modern consumer society, attributed to a group called the Union of Revolutionary Writers, was found at or near the video arcade that was the blast site.

"Consumers, we do not like your way of life, and we are dangerous to you," the pamphlet stated. "The half-eaten hamburger left by the dead man on the streets is now a revolutionary hamburger."

An Internet address in an advertisement on the pamphlet leads to a Russian-language Web site with slogans like, "To sell or to betray: Which is better?" and rambling comments on fascism, death and other topics. The site purports to be the work of a novelist, but his identity could not be confirmed.

The explosion at the Manezh mall, a popular hangout for young Muscovites, killed no one but injured 41 people, at least six seriously. More than 20 were in hospitals on Wednesday.

The blast seized the headlines in a city made jittery by a series of bomb scares at synagogues, a huge blast in a downtown hotel and repeated government warnings about the potential for terrorism. The Kremlin has said for months that political extremism was becoming a threat to public safety and that law enforcement agencies were prepared to crack down on radical factions.

The first suspicions about Tuesday's blast centered on Muslim separatists in Dagestan and Chechnya, regions where government forces have waged an increasingly bloody battle this summer against rebel armies and criminal gangs.

But on Wednesday the chief of the security service, Nikolai Patrushev, said that there was no reason "for the time being" to tie the bombing to the separatists, and that other extremists or hooligans were more likely responsible. Other experts speculated that warfare among criminal gangs, a likely cause of the bombing at the Intourist hotel four months ago, might be behind the explosion.

A spokesman for the security service said the blast was caused by a homemade bomb with the explosive force of 10.5 ounces of TNT, packed in a plastic canister with a timer. Police said they were studying videotape from mall security cameras in hopes of spotting the person or people behind the bombing.

The mall, beneath a large square just north of the Kremlin wall, opened in 1997 at the height of an investment boom. The city government poured hundreds of millions of borrowed dollars into the project and says it has been profitable. Private analysts say that is unlikely, given the nation's economic problems.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov called the bombers beasts and said an attack on an arcade, where children would be expected to gather, was especially cowardly.

Luzhkov, who heads his own political party and is a leading candidate to succeed President Boris Yeltsin, said the bombing could be an attempt to embarrass him in advance of the winter parliamentary elections, which will be followed next year by a presidential election.